


Something Better Than She Had Known

by Walutahanga



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies), Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 17:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13552167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: A brief moment between a mother-that-wasn't and her almost-daughter. (Mal from Descendants meets a different version of Maleficent).





	Something Better Than She Had Known

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Maleficent (2014) and the first Descendants movie. Contains some mild spoilers for both.

Maleficent watches the pair from a tree; two young women sitting in the long meadow grass, blonde and purple heads bent together over the pages of a book. Aurora was chattering in that quick way of hers, hands tracing ideas in the air. The purple-haired newcomer was nodding, a small careful smile hovering on her lips as if it might quickly flee again.

Maleficent doesn’t know how to feel about this other-worldly daughter of hers. This child that could have been hers (that _is_ hers) in some other time and place, that had arrived here on the wings of a spell and would depart again soon. All she knows is that the girl falls silent whenever Maleficent approaches, that lovely face draining of animation and closing over like a rock. She watches Maleficent out the corner of her eye and holds herself stiffly, not relaxing until she’s out of sight again. Maleficent dreads what caused that expression. (She fears she already knows.)

“Beautiful, isn’t she,” Diaval says from the bottom of the tree. Maleficent sighs and considers turning him into a frog.

“Diaval.”

“I’m just saying. No horns. No wings. But there’s something in the eyes that’s you.”

“That’s what worries me.” She recognises the tilt of his head when he’s getting ready to say something she won’t like. “Was there something else you wanted?”

“Just that you should talk to her now, while there’s time left.”

She hates it when he’s right.

“Go fly.” She flicks her fingers, turning him into a bird, and he departs with a caw.

She drops out of the tree, landing lightly in the soft grass, and walks across the meadow to the two young women. Aurora looks up and smiles at her approach, but the other girl goes still.

“Hello God-Mother,” Aurora says. “I was just telling Mal about the Moors.”

“You may have to finish later. I would like to speak to Mal alone.” Maleficent glances at the tense young woman. “If that is alright with Mal?”

The girl nods stiffly. “Fine.”

Maleficent waits until Aurora has disappeared into the trees before sitting down cross-legged, adjusting her wings for the change in position. Mal’s gaze goes to them immediately, unwillingly fascinated.

“Your mother does not have wings, I take it,” Maleficent says. Mal shakes her head silently. “Were they stolen as well?”

“I don’t know. She never told me about it, if they were.” Mal hesitates. “Aurora said that was why you cursed her.”

“I did.” Maleficent bowed her head. “And I have never stopped regretting that.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you regret it?”

“Because no matter what wrong Stefan did me, I had no cause to take it out on an innocent child who had done me no harm.”

Mal digests that. Maleficent lets her think it over.

“I don’t understand,” Mal says finally in a small, thin voice. “Why you get that, and she doesn’t.”

“Sometimes pain blinds us.”

“But she’s not like you. Even when she wasn’t being outright evil, she wasn’t like you. You’re so…wise and majestic and otherworldly. And she’s so small and petty and cruel.” Mal dashes away an angry tear. “And I feel so ashamed that she could have been _so much more_.”

There is little to say to that. Maleficent reaches out unthinkingly and is surprised when Mal leans into the touch. Surprised, but not too surprised to gather the girl close, curving her wings about them in a protective shield from curious eyes. Mal shivers when Maleficent's hand smooths down her (empty, human) back, and Maleficent wonders if she was born that way or if there are old scars underneath her clothes no one is ever allowed to see. If she has ever told anyone (if she even knows herself).

Useless to regret what she never did. Impossible to not be enraged by it. She holds her almost-was daughter fiercely tight, like she could keep her here by will alone, and whispers a secret just for the two of them: _"You should have been mine_.”

**Author's Note:**

> And a nameless longing filled her breast,  
> A wish that she hardly dared to own,  
> For something better than she had known.  
> \- Maud Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier


End file.
